


Midnight Mass

by politik



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Father Lantom’s cappuccinos cure all, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-01
Updated: 2020-01-01
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:47:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22074979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/politik/pseuds/politik
Summary: “Oh, Matthew,” he says, resting his hands on your shoulders, on the suit, on the blood that coats it from the thug you beat up earlier. It strikes you how wrong this feels. You’re staining his hands and his church. You brought the devil into his church.  What is wrong with you? “What are you doing here tonight?”You shrug his hands off your shoulders, and you can hear the sounds of his hands wiping themselves clean on the robes. “I missed mass tonight.”
Relationships: Father Lantom & Matt Murdock
Comments: 5
Kudos: 22
Collections: DDE’s 2020 New Year’s Day Exchange





	Midnight Mass

**Author's Note:**

  * For [valinorbound](https://archiveofourown.org/users/valinorbound/gifts).



> Written for valinorbound’s prompt “forward” for the the Daredevil Exchange’s 2020 New Years Day Exchange. Hope I did it justice!

You drag your feet on the sidewalk, slipping slightly on the snow but there’s no one around to see you stumble, at least not that you can sense. The snow messes with your balance, dampens all the sound around you so that you feel like a drunk. You heave a great breath in and gasp at the sharp pain in your lungs. The air has a bitter taste that you can sense even through the coppery blood coating your mouth, and it carries the sounds of Christmas carolers. You stop for a second, listening to them sing “Silent Night”, and you nearly laugh because the night is not silent, not calm, not bright. Not for you.

You shouldn’t have gone out. You told yourself so many times throughout the day that you wouldn’t. You’re trying to be good, to be better, to control the devil inside you that lives just below the surface. To be who Foggy and Karen think you can be. To be someone you want to be. So you tried to focus on the sounds of families gathering for dinner and putting out cookies for Santa and living lives that you always wanted for yourself. You tried to imagine what it would be like to not hear every scream and curse and robbery happening three blocks away. What it would feel like to hear your name called, and only your name, not the devil’s. 

But there’s something wrong with you. There’s something inside of you that just can’t let it go. It’s better during the day, less consuming. It’s easier to ignore when the sun warms your skin and there are more people running about and making noise and pretending to be happy. But it takes over at night. It’s something that Foggy and Karen don’t understand, that you don’t even understand completely yourself. At night when the city is quieter and you can hear things for blocks and blocks, your heart always feels like it could burst from the weight of everyone’s pain when there’s less of _everything_ to distract you from it. That’s when it takes over, the devil, this thing living inside you. You let him out so your heart can grow inside you, too.

And so you went out tonight, despite promising your friends that it had been tamed. Your knuckles are bruised now. You’re tired now.

The familiar smell of Clinton Church breaks through the scent of blood coating your nostrils and you drift toward the building without realizing it until you stumble into the wrought iron gate. The metal is so cold that it burns your fingers as you press it open. It creakes loudly, or maybe it’s just loud in your ears. You strain to hear what’s going on inside, but it’s fairly quiet except for a few rumblings. You shake your head a bit, shaking off some blood from your lip, and strain to hear a heartbeat, the one you know should be there. You hear it coming closer, and your heart swells just a bit. You wait.

The heavy wooden door to the church opens, releasing a waft of warm air that coats your skin like a balm. Father Lantom - it must be him, you can hear his priest’s robes as he shuffles towards you - beckons you inside.

“Oh, Matthew,” he says, resting his hands on your shoulders, on the suit, on the blood that coats it from the thug you beat up earlier. It strikes you how wrong this feels. You’re staining his hands and his church. You brought the devil into his church. What is wrong with you? “What are you doing here tonight?”

You shrug his hands off your shoulders, and you can hear the sounds of his hands wiping themselves clean on the robes. “I missed mass tonight.”

“That you did, my boy.”

Father Lantom is quiet for a moment. You can feel him studying you and wonder what he sees. You hope he doesn’t see the devil inside you, too. Then he sighs and puts a hand on your back and leads you to the basement. “A cappuccino would be nice right now, don’t you think?”

“Yeah, it would,” you say, and your throat for some reason feels tight.

The kitchen is quiet save for the sounds of Father Lantom busying himself with the cappuccino machine, and the air tastes like sugar and cinnamon. The nuns from St. Agnes must have been in here making Christmas cookies with the orphans. You remember them doing that all those years ago, remember how they would try to get you to join for a little while even though they never seemed to know what to do with you, the blind kid who couldn’t read a handwritten recipe or the temperature on the oven. The air smells like home in a way that breaks your heart.

Father Lantom hands you a hot mug and motions for you to take a seat across from him. “I’m assuming this is the reason you missed Christmas Eve mass,” he says. You feel the air shift and he must gesture to the devil suit.

“Yes, Father.”

“And there must be a reason you came here instead of home while dressed in that.”

“I don’t know, Father,” you say truthfully. “I didn’t realize where I was going until my feet stopped in front of the gate.”

He’s quiet again and you feel the weight of his stare. You take a sip of cappuccino and it burns all the way down to your stomach. “There must be a reason you came here instead of home.”

Home. His apartment? St. Agnes? His father’s gym, the apartment he and Foggy shared at Columbia, the office that’s no longer his? What is home? When did he lose it?

“I think I’m lost, Father.” You don’t need heightened senses to hear the break in your voice when you say it.

“Where were you tonight?”

You hear the phantom scream of a girl in an alley, feel the ghost of her attacker’s fist split your lip before you finally knocked him out. “I was out. I think you have a general idea of what I was doing.”

You hear the soft slurp as Father Lantom takes a small sip. “Why were you not with your friends. Foggy? Karen? It’s Christmas.”

“I know that,” you say, your voice gravelly. “We’re not exactly on speaking terms right now.”

“Why is that?”

“Because of me. Who I am.”

“Who you are or what you do?” says Father Lantom delicately. 

“Both,” you say. The answer feels wrenched out of you, and you wish you could take it back, that you had never verbalized what’s been eating at you since you handed Karen that mask and felt her anger and sadness. “Foggy and Karen don’t like the devil because he’s dangerous and consuming and makes me late. They won’t even speak to me because of it. But they don’t get that he’s something I can’t turn off. He’s this... _thing_ inside of me that I can’t separate.”

“Even if that were true, I don’t think you would want to separate him, knowing you as I do.”

At his words, you clench your hands so tightly around the coffe cup that you feel as though it might shatter. You want it to shatter. Want to feel the sharp pain of porcelain pieces piercing your skin. It had to feel better than admitting: “I don’t want to feel this way, Father.”

“Oh, Matthew,” he says again.

Tears sting your eyes and your throat feels so tight that breathing seems an impossible task. But you manage to gasp a quick sharp breath. “I didn’t want this, didn’t ask for it. I don’t want to be able to hear a scream a mile away, or know what you ate for yesterday’s breakfast when I smell your breath. I don’t want to have to filter every single sound that’s made around me. I don’t want to feel the fibers of my coat. But I do, and I can’t turn it off, and it’s making me lose everything.”

The words flow freer than they ever have. You heave a breath and the taste of Christmas cookies coats your tongue and the sweetness nearly chokes you. Father Lantom takes another sip of his cappuccino. Then he leans across the table and grips your forearm tightly.

“Matthew, you cannnot stop being who you are,” he says gently. “And I don’t think your friends want you to change.”

You lower your head. “That’s not true.”

“From what you’ve told me about them, I think it is true,” he presses. “I think your friends worry for you. I don’t think they like the idea of you getting hurt, even if it’s to help people, and I certainly don’t think they like feeling as though you choose the night over them.”

His words aren’t meant to sting just a bit, but you wince. Before you can say anything, he continues: “But I think your friends understand what makes you good, Matthew. You see people in need, and you help them. It’s admirable. But there’s only so much of yourself that you can give the nameless before you run out of yourself to share with those you love.”

“They’ve already told me this,” you say miserably. It’s why you tried to stop. Tried to be better. But you are who you are, and you’ve failed, yet again.

“You cannot change who you are, and you cannot change the past. You’ve already asked for their forgiveness.”

“I know that.”

He pats your forearm gently, and you can almost hear the smile in his voice when he says, “It seems as though there’s only one thing to do: move forward from this. Let them in, and keep moving forward.”

“Forward,” you say slowly, testing the words out.

“You focus so much on what you’ve done to push them away and you think they’ll never accept you. If they love you as I think they do, as you know they do, then they’ll come around eventually. Let them in and let them help you.”

His words sink in and you recognize the truth in them. You’ve been so afraid of whether or not they’d forgive you that you’ve shut them out. The truth is, you don’t know where Foggy or Karen are for Christmas because you never asked. You wanted to prove to them that you could be better than before, that you could be the friend they want you to be, that you have avoided them until you could prove how far along you’ve come. But you can make room for them, you need to make room for them. You can be their friend without changing who you are.

“It’s getting late,” says Father Lantom, breaking you from your thoughts. “You should get home before daylight breaks.”

You stand up and feel older than you ever have, but lighter as well. “Thank you, Father.”

He squeezes your arm again and leads you back up the stairs. You can’t hear the carolers outside anymore. They’ve gone to another neighborhood, or maybe they’ve just gone to sleep, readying themselves for Christmas morning. Father Lantom opens the door and the cold rushes at you and you shiver, but it feels refreshing, not bitter. You feel a warmer rush of air breeze over you; Father Lantom must be waving goodbye. “Take care of yourself, Matthew. And Merry Christmas.”

You feel your lips twitch into a smile for the first time tonight. “Merry Christmas, Father Lantom.’

With a wave, you take off down the steps and your feet hit the pavement and don’t drag anymore. You tilt your head to the sky, to the night, and hear people crying and someone screams a few blocks away, and you tense. But then you hear it: a mother a lullaby; bells ringing from a grandfather clock; a whispered ‘love you’ from someone on the precipice of sleep. For maybe the first time, you focus on those sounds, the ones that fill you up rather than tear you down. For the first time, you hear love in the night.

You square your shoulders and with the cold wind at your back, you take off, forward and into the night. To home.


End file.
